Recovery gathers steam

Thanks to sharp growth in professional and business services, Connecticut cobbled together a fourth straight month of job growth by adding 3,000 jobs in April, lowering the unemployment rate slightly to 9 percent even as joblessness nationally continued to increase.

The Fairfield County area contributed only slightly to the recovery, with some 200 jobs added despite a small decline in the financial services sector that is a significant driver of the local economy. Still, the estimated unemployment rate dropped faster locally than statewide, to 7.8 percent from 8.4 percent in March, an anomaly that could be caused by multiple factors, including data collection anomalies or differing numbers of job seekers at the county and state levels.

Statewide, Connecticut posted its second lowest number of initial claims for unemployment benefits dating back to January 2009.

Even the financial sector could be due for a quicker recovery than expected: New York City added an estimated 21,500 jobs in April, with the financial sector there sharing in the gains as the city”™s unemployment rate dropped to 9.8 percent in April from 10 percent in March.

Connecticut has added an estimated 8,900 jobs since December, though employment still remains down 14,100 jobs from a year ago. In April, some 5,100 jobs were added in professional and business services, which encompass everything from high-end consulting to office cleaning services.

That sector also includes temporary staffing agencies, which many economists are eyeballing for resumed growth as a bellwether for the overall economy, on the assumption companies will meet increasing demand through temps before resuming hiring full-time workers.

Construction, another closely tracked sector for the multiplier effect it creates from project spending, was down slightly from March and remains off 2,700 jobs from a year ago, or 4.9 percent.

“Despite such promising indicators, it appears we have a way to go before healthy job growth gets underway,” said Salvatore DiPillo, labor statistics supervisor in the Connecticut Department of Labor. “We are still faced with a shaky global financial system and high numbers of housing foreclosures ”¦ Other challenges include an unemployment rate that is higher than this time last year, (and) the number of weeks it takes to find new employment. While these issues all present significant stumbling blocks in rebuilding our economy, the job growth we have seen since the beginning of this year is certainly a boost.”

Providing a perhaps unexpected drag was the educational services market, which shed an estimated 1,600 jobs between March and April, a 2.7 percent drop matched only by the transportation, distribution and utilities sector which lost 1,300 jobs.
Health and social services also declined; in Stamford, Courtland Gardens Health Care Center Inc. revealed it would shut down its nursing home in Stamford, with plans to lay off 200 workers beginning in July.

Also that month, the beauty products maker Beiersdorf Inc. is scheduled to begin layoffs from its Norwalk facility, with 165 jobs slated to be erased. Those workers were recently certified by the U.S. Department of Labor as eligible for special jobless benefits, after DOL determined the layoffs were caused in part by foreign competition.

In a semiannual jobs forecast issued in mid-May through the New England Economic Partnership, Fairfield University professor Edward Deak predicted that Connecticut employment will continue rising, but he does not see employment reaching the levels seen before 2008 until the year 2014.